Shownotes
In this episode of The Athletes Compass, hosts Paul Warloski, Dr. Paul Laursen, and coach Marjaana Rakai unpack the difference between outcome goals and process goals—and why the latter often holds the key to long-term success, joy, and mental well-being in endurance sports. Marjaana shares her personal challenge of completing 50 marathons before turning 50, using it as a lens to discuss how meaningful goals must be broken into achievable milestones. The team emphasizes the importance of adaptability, realistic planning, and falling in love with the process, not just the finish line.
Key Takeaways
- Outcome goals are what you want to achieve (e.g. qualifying for Boston).
- Process goals are how you get there (e.g. consistent weekly training, mobility work).
- Obsessing over outcome goals is fragile—race-day factors are often uncontrollable.
- Purpose-driven goals enhance mental health, longevity, and motivation.
- Realistic scheduling and family support are key to sustainable training.
- The Athletica platform supports process-driven coaching through AI and adaptive planning.
- It’s okay (and smart) to revise goals when life changes—adaptability is part of success.
- Success isn’t hitting a single big session; it’s the accumulation of consistent efforts over time.
Transcripts
I think you have to fall in love with the process and then you're really unstoppable. If you find joy in getting up at five and gliding into that cold pool and getting it done, then there's no limits for you.
Paul Warloski (:Hello and welcome to the Athletes Compass podcast where we navigate training, fitness and health for everyday athletes. Setting goals is something every endurance athlete does, but are you setting the right kind of goals to actually improve performance and satisfaction? In this episode, we'll dig into the difference between outcome goals and process goals and why focusing on the how of your training might matter even more than the what.
Whether you're chasing a PR or just want to enjoy your training more, keep listening to help you rethink your goals and use them to become a better, more fulfilled athlete. All right, so why is goal setting so important for us endurance athletes, especially for those of us who are not professionals?
Paul Laursen (:Well, where do we start with this one? Again, the goals are just like so much that we say within everything is context based, right? So, ⁓ and often when we're starting with an endurance event, at the very first ⁓ point, you're usually trying to just complete it. So your first goal is usually just to complete an endurance event, right? And whether that's a 5K event and you're doing couch to 5K,
or all the way through to Ironman or you name your event that inspires you. So usually it's like kind of more of a completion thing. ⁓ And then of course that can evolve after you start to develop more and develop more confidence. And that could be anything from, I wanna do an 11 hour Ironman or I wanna do ⁓ a personal best, whatever that might be in a certain run time.
And then kind of what you're saying too, Paul, some of us also start to place these outcome goals in terms of, you know, I want to be top 10 in a grand Fondo, say for example, or a gravel race that inspires you. So lots of different contexts, lots of different goals. Ultimately, at the end of the day, these goals should be trying to something, bringing you some joy in your life.
And that could be from a health standpoint, a mental health standpoint, and a physical standpoint as well.
Marjaana (:They kind of bring direction and purpose to your everyday life. So I think of the outcome goal as my mountain where I want to get. And then those process goals are the steps ⁓ to get to.
Paul Laursen (:Hmm.
Paul Warloski (:Okay, let's talk about that a little
bit and define the difference between goals, outcome goals and process goals. So what's the difference between those two?
Marjaana (:Okay.
Paul Warloski (:So explain
a little more of your analogy.
Marjaana (:Okay, so for me at the moment, outcome goal is to complete 50 marathons by the time I'm turning 50. So that's my mountain. It's a massive mountain. And my process goals are
Paul Laursen (:awesome.
Marjaana (:to stay healthy because this is a massive, massive outcome goal.
But it could be like getting up and doing something every day, you know?
Paul Laursen (:Yeah, and that's actually getting up and doing something every day. And that actually relates to probably where we should start a little bit with this. Take a step back and I think of principles I've learned from Peter Attia, Outlive, and that is that having a sense of purpose in your life, whoever we are, like that relates to your mental health. And that also relates to your longevity.
and your health span and yeah, yeah. it's, you want to, you want to, whatever it may be in your life, you want to have some sort of a sense of purpose. And when we have these goals, like doing a 5K, an Ironman, a gravel race, whatever it may be, like that is giving you something to work towards every day. And just that action and just that, just striving towards that goal.
is actually bringing you more joy in your overall life. Like this is why these goals are actually important. And back to the last episode that we did about, you know, depression a little bit, right? Having like that, that lull because, you know, after that, in that gap that's follows after the event, well, you don't really, at that point, usually you don't have a goal, right?
You don't, your purpose is less clear. And this is why now with this whole goal setting process that we're gonna do, it's kind of, this is why it's important. Like you're going through this work so that you can develop and have a sense of purpose. You've got others and stuff, of course, in your life, right? Whether it be family or work or creative outlets, all these sorts of things, but.
But this in the context of Athletica and having like this physical goal, you know, this actually brings a sense of purpose, which will loop back to your own mental health, which will loop back into physiology, health physiology, as well as psychology. So they're all sort of interrelated. It is important, this podcast.
Marjaana (:Yeah, you just nailed it. I felt like after my Worlds last year, I was in that post-race blues for a while, kind of like drifting. I didn't really know. I didn't have the purpose and like a clear purpose what I'm doing, but because I love training, I just kept training. But I also had this nagging feeling at the back of my head. Like I need a goal to stay.
mentally
and not feel like I'm drifting. So this summer I just like I had to find a new goal and
Paul Warloski (:Can you repeat your goal again here?
Paul Laursen (:And you sure have.
Marjaana (:50 marathons by the time I'm 50.
Paul Warloski (:Not to ask you how old you are, but how many years is that going to be?
Marjaana (:Two and a half. Two and a half.
Paul Warloski (:and you're doing 50-5-0
marathons.
Marjaana (:Well, I've done eight or actually nine because I did one yesterday.
Paul Laursen (:She did one yesterday.
Marjaana (:I have 41 left.
Paul Warloski (:Yep.
That's amazing.
Marjaana (:Okay, so back it up a little bit. So I still think that I can get better at running. still like I'm 47
I think I started running marathon. My first marathon was 41 when I turned 41. So I think I can get better. I can get faster. that getting faster is outcome goal too. And
don't, I don't want to just slog, you know, slow jog, slog 50 marathons. Like I want to become a better marathon runner. I want to qualify for Boston during these two and a half years. So those are like tangible goals, but there are other goals there too baked in that are important to me and is bigger than me. And I know that these other goals,
Paul Laursen (:Yeah. Yeah.
Marjaana (:will keep me getting up early and giving me purpose to get up at five o'clock and go run. Right. It's not just about me getting better because I know that those times will come when, when kids get sick. I'm running like a, like a headless chicken, you know, trying to get all these life pieces into this big puzzle. And what is usually the first one to go is a training session, right. For many of us.
So I need something bigger to use as a glue. So when things are starting to fall apart, and maybe I get injured during this thing, but I need to have some kind of goals. So those are then the process goals that will keep me getting up early and doing that mobility session after bedtime, know, and giving me purpose and direction.
Paul Laursen (:Mm-hmm.
Paul Warloski (:So the outcome goal is to finish all these, qualify for Boston, are we saying that? Okay, so those are big steps. So those are quantifiable, measurable, specific goals that you reach for. The process goals are the daily training that you're doing, the mobility work, the strength training that you're going to continue, getting out the door and finding, keeping a plan going.
Marjaana (:Mm-hmm.
Paul Warloski (:Is there more to your process goals that you need to look at?
Marjaana (:So the reason I picked this incredible goal is that I also want it to be something bigger than myself because when you set the date for your marathons and you have somebody
partnering up with you, you don't want to be flaky. So you want to show up, right? So I want to bring attention to causes that are important to me, like youth female athletes, their equal participation in sports. I want to bring attention to, you know, women in sports tech and women in sports research.
perimenopause, women's health. So I'm hoping to find partners to fundraise for these causes. You know, ⁓ moms, mom athletes. There's a fantastic organization called Aunt Mother who work for, you know, providing childcare for new moms or moms with kids so they can actually do a race and not stand on the sidelines.
So things like that.
Paul Warloski (:Why do you think, you you've set some outcome goals, but I think it sounds like your process goals are almost more important. You've got that kind of beacon on the hill, your mountain, but why do so many endurance athletes focus entirely on outcome goals, like a race time or a placing? What are the risks of focusing just on that?
Marjaana (:Mm-hmm.
Do you wanna go first?
Paul Laursen (:Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know the answer necessarily, but it's like, and again, ⁓ you know, as I spoke about in the last podcast, ⁓ I've got my daughter who's, you know, she's a swimmer. And unfortunately with, with swimming at the top level, you have a, an outcome goal and it's just a, it's to get from point A to point B in the pool as fast as you can of using various different strokes. you know, and, that's kind of what she does. So that's, there's very clear sort of.
outcome goals as she continues her march through, as she keeps chipping off these times and going faster and faster and faster. the goal is quite specific. We know it will plateau as it does even in the very best in the world, right? But there's a process where she wants to see how far she can go on this because she's built like a swimmer and she's
Paul Warloski (:Mm-hmm.
Paul Laursen (:got the talent. so, yeah, it's, but everyone has their own different context for these sorts of things. I know you wanna have this specific goal, you wanna tie it to a why, why am I doing this, right? And then you need to go through a process of working towards that specific goal. So maybe you as the listener have a think about
You know, what is your specific goal? And then, you know, can you make that measurable? Very easy in my daughter's case, right? She just wants to go one second faster, right? Like then she's already kind of going. So it's like, how can she shave another second off? But you as the listener, who knows what that might be, right? It could be an infinite number of different goals, but.
Nevertheless, you either want to complete something or you want to probably lessen your time, produce more power. And of course, back to Athletica, it's a process-driven platform that takes you through on a day-to-day basis to try to slowly develop and help you work towards that goal. And this is because this change in the school, it doesn't happen overnight, right? We know that. And this is why we take a look at
your development, right? In terms of, well, we start with sort of where you are at with your profile, power or pace. And then it moves you through a process, a scientific process of slowly adding more load or stress where we know you're going to adapt, but you adapt individually. So we need to have tools in there to help you navigate your own process of adapting to your own specific way. And that would be your heart rate, your heart rate variability.
how your RPE and how these things are sort of feeling and how your body is sort of slowly starting to adapt. So I'm going all over the place, but this is, yeah, it's kind of back, it's going back. This is what we're sort of trying to do with Athletica is we're trying to take that goal and we're trying to put a process in place that helps you on a day-to-day basis. And that is actually, that's a perfect segue almost for something that is in development. know Marjaana is helping immensely.
spoke to some of our backend developers today. Marjaana is giving these feedback on how our conversational AI is working. And you can actually have conversations that are actually going towards helping this overall sort of process. sorry, I'm all over the sort of the map here, Marjaana, but like, know, what are your thoughts, Marjaana, on process and even like some of the experiences that you're having?
Paul Warloski (:Thank
Paul Laursen (:with our conversational AI coach in terms of how that's going to help the user in the future, the very near future too. By the time this podcast goes out, we may even have that in play for our beta users.
Marjaana (:Well, to answer Paul's question about why are we so obsessed about the outcome call and yes, that can give us a really good like something to reach for and something exciting. But it's a very fragile way of setting goals because what if the race goes bad?
Like there are so many things that you can't control on the race day. And then you look back and all your training, that was amazing, by the way, you crushed all the training sessions and all that is wasted in your head if you're just focusing on your outcome goal, right? So take for example, Ironman Calgary a few weeks ago, two thirds of the
the participants didn't get to do the whole race because I guess 30 people got hypothermia and the organizers decided to cut the bike short. So what if you were one of those people who didn't get to complete the full course? Now everything was wasted if you just focused on the outcome goal, right? What about all these sessions that you nailed?
Paul Warloski (:Thank
Marjaana (:Do you still value those? So I think this focusing on outcome goal is pretty fragile way to go about. And what I love about Athletica is that because we have repeated sessions, 30-30s or your tempo runs or over-unders, as you...
complete those week after week after week, you can see your process, your power goes up and you're tackling those process goals, right? Like every day is one chance to take that step towards the top of the mountain. And then the conversational coach, if you have somebody that you can actually ask questions and they reply, you know,
That's your code. That's your partner. partner in crime that you can have conversations with. And to remind you, hey, you just completed this session. You're one step closer to your goal. It can be as simple as like, okay, just reminder, remember to do your mobility session tonight or whatever it is, right? So I think if we can reel back.
from just focusing on the exciting outcome goal and break it down to process goals. It will help in the everyday process.
Paul Laursen (:Yeah. And sorry, Paul, the only thing is like, and again, I'm thinking on the fly in terms of what we are developing. And there's all these interesting new AI tools that we can kind of leverage. one of them, know, the listener may actually know about the intervals IQ feature that we've just kind of just released where it actually picks out the intervals that you have. that is, that's probably going to be working back.
to linking back into the framework of the, of Athletica. So the AI coach can actually go back in and to Marjaana's point, find how you're working towards that process. ⁓ you're two watts up on your intervals from last week or et cetera, et cetera, from, from the weeks before. So that's all in on what's called a database of your, your individual historic profile.
that's kind of cool. So I thought it was going to get better and better at helping you work towards these process goals. I think big distinguishable difference between outcome and process goals. You can control somewhat your process goal. You cannot control your outcome goal. And again, back from last episode when I was talking to my daughter, we were going to love her no matter what. If she didn't hit her time and she didn't get a gold medal, no problem.
Paul Warloski (:you
Paul Laursen (:That's the, doesn't matter. That's only an outcome goal and we can't control that. And if someone beats you on the, on the day, you can't control them. You just shake their hand and just you or shake them, shake their hand or give them a hug and just say, you killed it today. Well done. You, you beat me. No problem. But you can control you and that's the process. And you can also back to you like reacting. You can only control how to react. You react to anything. You can actually control, you know, necessarily.
any of these sort of outcomes. So control the controllables, let everything else just be as...
Marjaana (:And sometimes outcome goals can feel so far away. They can feel so far away that you kind of give up before you even try, right? Because they just like, that's impossible. We might want to talk about, you know, setting realistic goals,
Paul Laursen (:Mm-hmm.
Paul Warloski (:Yeah, definitely.
Paul Laursen (:Yeah.
Paul Warloski (:Well,
just as an example, know, Marjaana's talked about her outcome goal is to run a marathon and get fast enough so that she can qualify for Boston. That's an outcome goal is a Boston qualifier and running 50 marathons. I mean, there's a whole bunch of outcomes. But a process goal would be, for example, I'm going to run six days a week.
Paul Laursen (:Yeah.
Yeah, and do 50 of them. Let's be clear.
And do 50, and do 50 before 50. Yeah, yeah.
Marjaana (:You
Paul Warloski (:with at least one speed session and one long run consistently for the next eight weeks. So that you've got a very specific controllable, as Paul just talked about, measurement that you can, know, that's something that day to day, it's like, yeah, I can do that. know, Boston qualify might feel a little overwhelming, like Marjaana just said, but I can run six days a week and make this particular process goal work for me. You know, that's one example.
⁓
What, you know, how do these process goals do you think affect our mental well-being compared to outcome focus goals?
Paul Laursen (:Yeah, nice question, Paul. think the process goal, there's a better level of control on it than the outcome goal. So I can control that process that you just gave me. I think I can manage my time schedule and my resilience and recovery so that I can run.
six days and I can do one HIIT session in that week and I can do one long run in that week. That feels manageable within my context. And yeah, it just feels like I can put my, I can wrap my arms around that goal a little bit better, but I can't really control my Boston qualifying outcome. That's going to happen or it's not going to happen, you know? But if I...
know if I go through this process that you just outlined, it's sure going to improve my chances. I know I'm a lot closer to my outcome goal if I go through this process compared to if I don't. So ⁓ that's how I kind of shape it in my little head.
Marjaana (:I think, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think we've all, we know, we've all been there where we, our goals were to qualify for Olympic games or become a pro triathlete or, you know, stand on the top of the podium and listen to our national song, you know, and we all failed.
And all we know, many athletes who had that same goal to stand on the highest podium, they never realized.
Paul Laursen (:They become sports scientists, that's why we know them all.
Paul Warloski (:Hahaha!
Marjaana (:That's why we all here.
We want to learn what we did wrong. But yeah, so we carry the chip on our shoulders the rest of our lives and trying to help others. But mentally, like it is a grieving process too. And how many of, you know, athletes that never got there that we know of that struggled mentally for sure. I did.
Paul Laursen (:a lot.
Marjaana (:Mm.
Paul Warloski (:So in working with endurance athletes, how should we guide them or how can they guide themselves to set meaningful and realistic goals?
Marjaana (:Think about the craziest and scariest goal that you can figure out that excites you and you feel butterflies and then break it down to milestones.
Paul Warloski (:Can you explain that process a little more?
Marjaana (:⁓
Paul Warloski (:especially the milestones part.
Marjaana (:Milestone spark. So if you want to go for triathlon, so there's three sports, right? Swim, bike, run. You might want to start with the sprint one, which is not super long. So anyone can do a sprint or you can go and throw a little twist into it and start with Olympic distance, which I did. I had no, I hadn't.
no idea what I was doing, but it excited me. I'm like, I can do sprint. So why not a little bit more challenging? So I like challenging things if you haven't figured that out yet. And then I started breaking it down to, I looked at the distance. What do I need to do? Where I'm at at the moment. For example, I had not swim for like 10 years.
So I had to start swimming again. And that was my process goal. Like, okay, sign up for a master swim swim club and go twice a week. that was doable. And then I had to get a bike and start biking. That was the second process goal. Just bike once a week. And then I was running, so running was the easiest for me to do, but just, it was so simple. just, you know,
made a write down. I didn't even have an electric calendar or anything. I didn't have training pics. I just wrote down on a piece of paper and I put it on my fridge. So every time I had completed a training session, it was a tick.
Look at me now, I got all kinds of electronic calendars and gadgets and it grows from there.
Paul Warloski (:Paul, what about you? What do you do with your athletes? Do you do goal setting with your athletes?
Paul Laursen (:yeah, I think in the majority of cases for me, Paul, they have usually approached me because they have their goal, but they want to come consult on how to potentially reach that goal and fix a problem maybe that they might be having. Maybe that's a nutrition element or whatnot.
But yeah, I think I'm kind of like Marjaanna in agreeing where I'm there to challenge the goal and make sure that it's big enough and that they're not ⁓ undercutting their dream. And also to make sure that they believe and they know ultimately that they can do hard things, they can do amazing things. I learned this when I first started.
I was 19 and someone at the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, a triathlon club told me, Paul, you you should do an Ironman. And of course this is way back, you know, what is it, 30, 40 years ago. you know, it was not a big, it was hard to kind of wrap your head around that. Whereas it's a lot more popular now and whatnot. So, but it was, yeah, like.
I guess I'm very similar to Marjaana and it's like, yeah, okay, I wanna sort of try to do that. But it ⁓ was a mental goal, not a physical goal. I was still a very capable, athletic individual. But so many times we're limited by our mental capacity to believe that we can do something. And this is the job, I guess, ultimately of...
of good coaches like yourself, Paul, to allow and convince people that work under you that they can do hard things. And then you put the process in place to be able to prove that you do that. Now we try to do that a little bit with Athletica too, because anyone using Athletica will know that there are pieces of both the physiology that's needed as well as pieces of the race itself that are all within Athletica. So you're actually doing
You're doing purposeful race pace efforts to actually prepare you for the time that you're going to be at that race pace in the event itself. We're reverse engineering, ultimately, the overall race, but we're just giving that to you in pieces so that you adapt to that as you kind of go through that. And then once those, you know, there really shouldn't be too much of a mystery.
in terms of what you're capable of doing on the given day, if you've gone through the process and done all your sessions with good compliance. And again, look back to the Luke Evans podcast. We did a few back with Luke himself where the guy won Ironman Canada using Athletica. And he tells how he used Athletica to basically...
reversed, he's an engineer himself, so it really suited him, but he basically could see the whole reverse engineering process. And over a three year period of time using Athletica, well, he's the winner of Ironman Canada, remarkable. But that's it. It's just a reverse engineering sort of process.
Marjaana (:And I want to add to it that changing your goal is okay. It's not a failure. You can adapt like a pro. Just change your goals. It's okay.
Paul Laursen (:Hmm.
Yeah, well, my goal is certainly adapted, right? So I'm trying to keep my VO2Max above my age, failing miserably. Not miserably, but I'm a little bit under. I've got one final push here to go at the end of August before the snow flies. I've got one more block of building to try to do this with. But I'm.
I'm looking forward to getting some leverage through Marjaana's velocity sessions. So I'll be showing up on those to get my high intensity interval training capacity in there. I think that's really been missing. I've sort of put in a little bit of volume, but I haven't really put the icing on. So I'm leaving it in Marjaana's capable hands on velocity. So join us there, everyone.
Marjaana (:Yay! That'll be fun.
Yeah.
Paul Warloski (:So how often should athletes revisit or adjust their goals? Like Marjaanna was just talking about outcome goals, especially if life throws curve balls or injury happens. I not just outcome goals, but also the process goals.
Marjaana (:Anytime you need to.
Paul Laursen (:Yeah, for sure. I'm reflecting again, sorry, on the Luke Evans podcast, but he describes how think it was six weeks out. was hit by a car before he won Ironman Canada, but it's like he had to just, he checked, he just had to readjust everything and had to heal from the injury and readjust things. The tools are still there to be able to help you.
Heart rate variability was a big one for him and it's you he's got the like we've included that in the in the blog on the Luke Evans ones where you can actually see the heart rate variability is in the tank and the days following the the the accident but he just waits for that to kind of heal and come back up and then he gets gets back going again and You just have to yeah, you just have to like self-correct right When life throws you the punch and it does unfortunately it's just hits all of us
Marjaana (:Mm-hmm.
Paul Laursen (:⁓ You don't know what's around the corner.
Marjaana (:You gotta be a ninja.
Yeah, you gotta be a ninja because you gotta be able to, you know, punch back and adapt. that's bravery to wait until HRV bounces back. So close to your race.
Paul Laursen (:Well, it was, you know, in, it was,
yeah, I think, well, remember if you want your HRV to bounce back, the recipe for that is aerobic training. So you need L1, L2, level one, level two, zone one, zone two kind of work that will allow HRV to increase, to rebound back up. So if it's down low, you're either, the job is to either rest fully or
just add, like don't add more stress, don't add high intensity interval training into the recipe, right, into the system. Then that's just, that's the time you wanna be doing more aerobic work. And that's what he did. yeah, like we showed that I think in the, a lot of Dan Plews' work with heart rate variability with the rowers. And there's even like really good case studies where we had ⁓ athletes winning.
⁓ Olympic medals and doing exactly that. They were in the tank. HRV was way down here. And even though a HIIT session was on the calendar to do, we knew we had to just do aerobic sessions so that the HRV would rebound. The person is in more homeostasis and then they can adapt to their training. If your HRV isn't kind of in a balanced format, if you're not, you know,
ready to adapt to the training, you don't wanna give hard training to an individual because it's just more stress that they can't adapt to. So Alan Cousins tells us this often if you follow him. And it's just a fundamental principle and it's right in there with Athletica as well.
Marjaana (:I want to go back to your question, Paul, when you said when and how to revisit the goals. And I think it's important that we recognize that it's okay to change your goal. Like, obviously, if you sign up to an expensive race, you want to show up because usually you can't, you know, change them or refer to next year. But it's okay.
It's okay to change. I'm not excited to do an Ironman anytime soon, so I'm not signing up. I'm revisiting my goals and maybe I'll postpone them until I find that excitement again, but I'm not going to push through something. Ironman training is hard. I want to find joy in my everyday
life because I know that if I'm training for Ironman that it's not exciting me, I'm not going to do the training. So changing up the goals is totally okay. Like we're not doing this as a profession. should give us joy and purpose. And if it's not anymore, it's okay to change. Go do something else.
Paul Warloski (:It's definitely something that, you know, when I'm talking with one of my athletes, I go back and, you know, look at, you know, review their goals before our meetings and we talk about their goals and, and that's a time, a good time to adjust them. And, you know, kind of a monthly check-in and check out what progress they've made and if we need to make any adjustments. Should athletes write down their goals?
or use a framework like a SMART goal, know, specifically, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely? Should we be writing these down? Have you written down your goal, Marjaana?
Marjaana (:yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Especially when you're starting something new that you've never done before, it's really useful to have it really visible and in your face to remind you why you're doing this. 5 a.m. wake up calls, jump in the pool, know your why and keep it right in your face.
Paul Laursen (:Hmm
Marjaana (:But once you get your routine going and you can kind of like remember you're living the why, then it's easier to, you know,
You don't need the post-its everywhere, but it's good to revisit them and kind of like ask yourself, why am I doing this? And sometimes you have to ask yourself, why am I doing it several times to get into the really core? Like when I started first doing Iron Man, it was exciting to me and I made all these milestone goals, but it wasn't clear to me why I was doing.
why I wanted to do an Iron Man. And I had to go through a list of why am I doing it several times before I got to the core. And it was to be a role model for my daughter and my kids that they can see that mom can do really hard things. So they can do hard things too.
they are obviously going to do hard things at some point and it's okay. know, find your way.
Paul Laursen (:Find your why, yep, absolutely. There is actually a section two within the goals when you're actually putting down your A, B, and C races in Athletica. So you can actually write down what, you know, there's a space and input space there where you can actually put those in. Journaling is very effective, right? And this is kind of going back to what we spoke about the last time on the post-race analysis, right? We want people...
If they, if they don't mind sharing their overall experience with their, you know, their overall training build, the actual race itself, what they kind of experience there. So, but yeah, and this is sort of the, where the process starts is, you know, what is your goal? Why is your goal that, that way? And, ⁓ you know, where, you know, what are the potential outcome goals as well that you may have? and, and yeah, and that's, ⁓
It's good to put those on. We've got goal time, overall place, category place. Those are all outcomes, but then in the anything to add, could put, that's really where you could put an input on some of the process aims that you might have to get you towards some of those outcome goals. So feel free to use those input places. Of course, the ⁓ AI coach eventually is going to be
hungrily in eating that info up and helping you towards those in the future.
Paul Warloski (:Yeah, and think inherent in Athletica, you know, with the process goal that I said about running six days a week with a speed session, mean, that's part of what Athletica gives us is that kind of a process goal so that you are doing the daily and weekly and monthly training to be ready for your outcome goal.
Go ahead, Paul.
Paul Laursen (:yeah,
that's right. And like, that's where you really have a, an opportunity in your settings to fine tune some of these process goals, right? Like just to Paul's point, you know, you, that, that, that process goal has to fit in with your life at the end of the day too. Right. And this is where, you know, we've got in your settings under settings training, you can actually, you know, declare.
the number of hours, minimum and maximum that you have in the week to train, then you've actually got the days that you are available to train. So these can actually be placed in there. And it's a good idea to try to do that so that these goals are realistic and that they will actually fit within your life. So ⁓ yeah, that's kind of the place where the...
you have the opportunity to match the process goals alongside the constraints that are natural to happen within your life as an everyday athlete.
Paul Warloski (:So finally, what are some common mistakes that athletes make when setting goals and how can we fix them or avoid them?
Paul Laursen (:Hmm... Common mistakes. What do you think, MJ?
Marjaana (:not checking your realistic availability for training. Meaning, I want to do 15 hours, but realistically, I only have time for eight. And then what happens is that you either delete or you miss sessions and missing sessions eventually start snagging your mental...
wellbeing, because we all know if we miss a session and it's kind of nagging us and either we try to catch up and end up injured or sick, or it just like doesn't feel right. It feels like this program is not for me. It's asking for too much. But when we release it, set realistic expectations on our availability.
Paul Laursen (:Yeah, I would say that's probably the key one that I see too, where someone will be inspired because they're watching the Tour de France or whatever it is that inspires them. And then they research and find out what these elite athletes are doing for their training. And then they download or get that plan. And then they try to just mimic that plan, expecting that if they can do
do that training, that they'll achieve the same sort of goals. Of course, it just doesn't work that way. It's a very slow process to actually be able to absorb such 15 or 25 or 35-hour training weeks. can't just, out of the gate, you just can't do these crazy things. I find Reddit threads like that quite...
amusing, people just sort of have to find out those issues for themselves. This is again where Athletica shines because we should only be recommending a program, a plan that fits with what you've actually been able to do in the relatively recent past. And that's what it tries to do. If it's not doing that, definitely...
let us know and we can usually tweak the sessions. Marjaana is a bit of a master at doing that and helping people. Doesn't get it right all the time, but it, often it does. And, and yeah, it needs to be, it needs to take you from where you're sitting and then slowly progress that. ⁓ Again, back to the Luke Evans podcast. He said exactly that. He's led, this is probably the key thing and the key mistake that people make.
is that they don't recognize just how slow the overall adaptation process happens. he said, he goes, I started three years on Athletica and it slowly over that three years built me stronger and stronger and stronger. And now, only now am I doing these 25 hour training weeks, but I certainly wasn't out of the gates three years ago. But lo and behold, after three years doing this, plus with his abilities, then that's...
process happens, the outcome goal happens. So yeah. And if you're young and you're young in listening to this, like a Luke Evans who started with that when he's only 25, there's these adaptation processes. You're in just the driver's seat because they're so much faster compared to, you know, like us old guys and gals that are on the podcast here.
where we don't quite have the same adaptive capacity that we did as we did maybe 20, 30 years ago, right guys?
Marjaana (:It's so sad.
Paul Warloski (:No.
Marjaana (:What about you, Paul? What do you see with your athletes?
Paul Warloski (:Yeah, you know, and was thinking with, you know, two, two big things is to, know, lot of my juniors focus on the outcome goals a lot and that's their, their big driver. And, and so I think that's a common mistake is to really fixate on that as opposed to looking at the process goals. I mean, it's great to have outcome goals because they drive you.
on a day-to-day basis, let's look at the process goals. And I think it's also important if you are taking on a, and I'm sure you did this, Marjaanna, and I'm not casting aspersions, to make sure that you've got your family on board. Because if you're taking on a big goal that's going to take a lot of time, you've got to have that family and friend support because things are going to be a little different. So that's part of the adventure.
Marjaana (:Yeah, totally. Yes, I put in an application for family support for my 50 by 50 project. And yesterday they all joined me for a little bit and I finished with my two youngest, the last 500 meters when I was struggling and it was sweet. It was super sweet to finish it with them.
Paul Warloski (:That's awesome.
Marjaana (:But I think you have to fall in love with the process and then you're really unstoppable. If you find joy in getting up at five and gliding into that cold pool and getting it done, then there's no limits for you. If you're a youth athlete and you really love that grind, you're unstoppable.
Paul Laursen (:I would just so what a great one to kind of get towards the end on this on MJ. And I was, I've just seen that with every athlete that I'm working with now and it is, see them falling in love with the process. And once they've done that, it's just, it's magic, right? Because they get, they just all of a sudden get that success isn't any one huge session that you kind of do.
Marjaana (:Mm-hmm.
Paul Laursen (:And it's like, understand that they all of a sudden grasp the patience element of it. And they're not trying to hit PBs in every single session. They're okay with doing a nice easy zone two session. They understand the purpose of it and that all of these are purposeful building blocks that are going to contribute to the process that build me into a greater athlete. Not tomorrow, not the next day, not next week, maybe not even next month.
But maybe, and maybe next year. And that's okay. And it's, but it's the process and I'm into this and, then they slowly start to get these wins. And then it's just, it's magic.
Marjaana (:It is magic. And then it doesn't even matter the one occasional race that didn't go as planned, right? Then there are lot more receptible finding that learning from those failed races that we all have those. So when the joy and the purpose and the love is there, then it is really a magical journey.
We are so lucky to witness those journeys as coaches too.
Paul Laursen (:We are, and that's what we're trying to do at scale too with Athletica as well. those Athletica users, ⁓ yeah, keep on your process and keep enjoying it. And that process is just gonna get better and better, we promise you, as you go through, especially as conversational AI comes to the foray very soon.
Paul Warloski (:That is a perfect place to end today's episode on goals. When this episode comes out, make sure that your goals, that you put your goals in our forum and we can talk about them and share them. think that would be a great place to discuss what you're working on. Thanks for listening today to the Athletes Compass podcast. Take a moment now, subscribe, share, and let's keep navigating this endurance adventure together.
Improve your training with the science-based platform, Athletica, and join the conversation at the Athletica Forum. For Marjaana Rakai and Dr. Paul Laursen I'm Paul Warloski and this has been the Athletes Compass podcast. Thank you so much for listening.
